Critical Terms in Futures Studies

This volume provides the essential vocabulary currently employed in discourses on the future in 50 contributions by renowned scholars in their respective fields, which examine future imaginaries across cultures and time. Not situated in the field of futurology proper, it comes at future studies 'sideways' and offers a multidisciplinary treatment of a critical futures' vocabulary. The contributors have their disciplinary homes in a wide range of subjects history, cultural studies, literary studies, sociology, media studies, American studies, Japanese studies, Chinese studies, and philosophy and critically illuminate numerous discourses about the future (or futures), past and present. In compiling such a critical vocabulary, this book seeks to foster conversations about futures in study programs and research forums and offers a toolbox for discussing them with an adequate degree of complexity.

Includes contributions from a truly global set of scholars Features an interdisciplinary profile with perspectives from cultural and literary studies, history, religious studies, American studies, Chinese studies, media studies, theater and performance, politial science, gender studies, and African American studies Identifies transcultural patterns of knowing the future from global positionalities across the globe

Autorentext

Heike Paul is Chair of American Studies at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany. She is the author of The Myths That Made America: An Introduction to American Studies (2014) and the co-editor of The Comeback of Populism: Transatlantic Perspectives (2019). She is currently Director of the Bavarian American Academy in Munich. She previously served as Vice-President of the German Association for American Studies (2014-2017). In 2018, she was awarded the Leibniz-Prize by the German Research Foundation.

Inhalt

1. Introduction.- 2. Afro-Pessimism (Joseph Winters).- 3. Alternate History (Dirk Niefanger).- 4. Anthropocene (Sarah Marak).- 5. Archive (Martha Schoolman).- 6. Artificial Intelligence (Scott Sundvall).- 7. Astrofuturism (Alexandra Ganser).- 8. Calendar (Marc Andre Matten).- 9. Contingency (Wolfgang Knöbl).- 10. Data (Lev Manovich).- 11. Death (Nader El-Bizri).- 12. Decision (Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger).- 13. Democracy (Mareike Gebhardt).- 14. Development (Aram Ziai).- 15. Digitization (Scott Selisker).- 16. Divination (Ulrike Ludwig).- 17. Dreaming (Barbara Weber).- 18. Fate (Georges Tamer).- 19. Fictionality (John Carlos Rowe).- 20. Forecasting (Arunabh Ghosh).- 21. Futurism (Peter Maurits).- 22. Futurology (Sohail Inayatullah).- 23. Gesture (Rebecca Schneider).- 24. Hope (Florian Tatschner).- 25. Ignorance (Katharina Gerund).- 26. Imagination (Birgit Spengler).- 27. Knowledge (Heike Paul).- 28. Magic (Erik Mortenson).- 29. Messianism (Anna Akasoy).- 30. Millennialism (Catherine Wessinger).- 31. Mission (Marina Ngursangzeli Behera).- 32. Neoliberalism (Renee Heberle).- 33. Optimism (Wendy Larson).- 34. Planning (Julia Obertreis).- 35. Play (Fabian Schäfer).- 36. Prefiguration (Mathijs van de Sande).- 37. Prevention (Stefan Willer).- 38. Queer Futurity (Cedric Essi).- 39. Revolution (Lanie Millar).- 40. Science Fiction (Marc Bould).- 41. Security (Timothy Melley).- 42. Seriality (Elisabeth Bronfen).- 43. Singularity (Luke Goode).- 44. Speculative realism (Graham Harman).- 45. Sustainability (Frank Adloff).- 46. Temporality (Raji Steineck).- 47. Time (Frank Darwiche).- 48. Time Travel (Kay Kirchmann).- 49. Transhumansim (Jennifer Gidley) .- 50. Utopia (Barnita Bagchi).- 51. Virtuality (Marie-Laure Ryan).

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